The WazirX crypto exchange was hacked, with $230 million stolen, including ~$100 million of Shiba Inu.
The hack triggered panic selling, especially for Shiba Inu, which dropped nearly 10% in price.
Wintermute had to intervene by buying and selling SHIB on exchanges, providing some temporary stability.
Analysts predict a further decline for Shiba Inu with support at $0.00001468.
If the price falls below $0.00001468, a steeper drop to $0.00000886 is likely.
One of India's largest crypto exchanges, WazirX, got hit with one of the harshest crypto exploits of the year on Thursday this week.
This hack saw around $230 million worth of several assets get stolen, depleting nearly half of its reserves.
However, while the crypto market has thankfully remained stable despite the hack, some cryptocurrencies haven’t been so lucky.
Shiba Inu especially, was one of the cryptos stolen during the WazirX hack.
And just as the attackers began making moves to launder the cryptocurrency, we are now looking at a significant sell-off on the second largest memecoin on the market.
After the hack, WazirX addressed the incident via a tweet, which reassured users that their funds were safe.
However, while user funds within the platform remain safe, the implication of the hack extends far beyond WazirX and is now casting a shadow of FUD over Shiba Inu.
According to an analysis of the hack by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, around $235 million worth of assets were stolen, including a staggering $96.5 million worth of Shiba Inu, Ethereum ($52.6 million), Polygon (MATIC) ($11 million), Pepe ($7.6 million), Tether’s USDT ($5.7 million), and Floki Inu ($4.7 million).
This triggered a rush of FUD in the market, pushing investors towards panic-selling their assets.
Notably, around 5 trillion SHIB washed through exchanges within a few hours after the hack, causing a major dip in the general memecoin market from a market cap high of $50.73 before the hack to $47.6 billion at the time of writing.
Shiba Inu, especially, saw its price dip by nearly 10% from a high of $0.00002 to $0.000017.
According to insights from Arkham, this decline was mainly due to the hacker involved, selling off a whopping $102.1 million worth of the memecoin.
The effects of this sell-off were so severe that Wintermute, a market maker, had to intervene by buying SHIB from decentralized exchanges and then selling it on centralized exchanges.
Because of this intervention, Shiba Inu is showing relative stability around $0.000017 and an intra-day dip of 1.13%.
An analysis of the chart now shows that Shiba Inu is trading inside a descending triangle and is now declining after the hacker sell-off caused a failure to break above the upper trendline of the formation.
Shiba Inu’s price action
The decline in Shiba Inu will likely continue.
However, significant support sits at around $0.00001468, and we should see the memecoin rebound for another attempt at breaking out.
The only invalidation of this outlook would be a sustained break and close below $0.00001468, beyond which the cryptocurrency will likely continue further down towards $0.00000886.
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